Please forgive typos or other mistakes; I will take a fresh look tomorrow and edit. I'm worn out! I've been reading, blogging, and chattering with family and friends about Solomon Spalding and the origins of the LDS church rather obsessively over the past couple of weeks and have barely had time to breathe. Until the first Presidential debate I was convinced Mitt Romney had not a snowball's chance in hell (a rather apt cliche) of winning our Presidency.
After posting an anti-Romney/Mormon screed when he first got the nomination by default, I took it off. My interest is not in exposing all the admittedly weird rituals and beliefs; ex-Mormon sites proliferate on the Web and others who have more experience in the temple than I have already revealed pretty much all the bizarre stuff, or at least enough of it that we can get the picture pretty well.
Yet I took that blog entry down. I'm not a person who likes to hurt anyone or enjoys attacking persons for their beliefs. I firmly believe in freedom of religion in the United States as well as the separation of church and state, but when honest, spiritual persons tell me why they feel as they do about certain things I'm usually empathetic. (I know, Republicans believe empathy is pathetic and weak, but I'd like to posit that it is the quality Jesus asked us to exercise at all times.) Thus I did not feel comfortable going public with my views and took down that blog entry.
But then Debate One happened. For the sake of brevity I'll just mention a few observations in light of media coverage of the event: Our President looked very tired, as might be expected of a man who is running a country whose embassy had been recently attacked overseas, among other major concerns both domestically and internationally; and 2) Mitt Romney was boorish, ignoring the moderator and going far over his permitted time in a debate format that has been honored, with perhaps small exceptions, in every previous Presidential debate until now. Mitt Romney is not used to hearing "no," and the hell with the rules, but that's not surprising in the least to me. He shilled for his brand-new positions like a used car salesman desperate to sell the car with the broken engine block before his customer notices that core defect.
Since that debate, I've witnessed Republicans' embracing a candidate they hadn't been too sure of until the moment he appeared to come out swinging, a brash he-man to President Obama's more dignified, statesmanlike and yes, apparently fading as the night went on, demeanor. Of course, Mitt, who laughed so jollily when he called himself, one of the richest men in this nation, "unemployed," had nothing but weeks of daily preparation from his team of experts--experts in mass hypnosis, no doubt, who also train LDS missionaries and other church leaders--"Just say what they want to hear, and the hell with the facts. Come out tough and confident and spew lies through your teeth and the sheep out there will love you because you look much more like their version of what a President of this nation should look like--more like a Thomas Jefferson than a Frederick Douglass, as was meant to be."
Worked like a charm. Like a peeping stone telling the future, by damn.
(N.B. I separate LDS leadership from LDS membership--I've known and still know many fine human beings who are members, but they are forbidden to look at sources such as this and have no idea about the church's unsavory beginnings. I'm trying to also revise my term for the rank and file Republicans out there; I know so many of them here in Appalachia, and they are good, well meaning folks who, in many cases, are very intelligent. However, they don't take the time to investigate their party's views, the mis-information so many sources on the Right now know they'll blindly accept, or compare their pundits' comments on any given topic when they relate to a Democrat versus Republican.
I am sympathetic to the plight of these good folks because I've been hoodwinked myself; I know the power of propaganda to subvert my best human qualities to a belief system that reveals its ugliness as slowly as it can until changing one's view affects every aspect of their lives, particularly relationships within their own families. I know, from debating with my friends who are Romney/Ryan supporters, that they are not any more mean or selfish than I am--but only I seem to be able to see the chasm between their beliefs and the views they've swallowed from Fox et al. and the conclusions they make.
My attempt here, I suppose, is to acknowledge the power of Groupthink--something I hope to explore in more depth in this and my other blogs.)
My goal here is not to personally produce evidence--though, as a librarian and genealogist, I will be searching every nook and cranny for anything that might possibly be relevant. However, my plan for this blog is to look back at my lifelong fascination with religion and philosophy. For I feel haunted by Solomon, not only to publicize his rightful authorship of a fantastic tale upon which thieves based a cult of never-before-seen proportions--but also to put together what I've learned thus far about teleological matters and perhaps even rechristen myself a Christian, not one who believes what the Bible tells us of his death and resurrection as literal truth, but as a person who follows Jesus's teachings that I learned so well in Sunday School, thanks to Mrs. Kremelmeier's felt board. I know that, if Christians truly follow Christ's Sermon on the Mount and his other lessons, we would not be arguing today about whether or not to provide social services to the least among us.
As I look back on my life, religion and philosophy have captured my passions as long as I can remember--though most of the time I've been what some call agnostic. I've never, even when professing that I believed the LDS to be true "beyond a shadow of a doubt," fully decided whether or not God or something less anthrocentric exists out there. My personal beliefs lean so far to the left, and always have, that I can't explain how I accepted the LDS racist and homophobic policies of the 1970's when I joined (and before and beyond), or much of anything else about it, but that is the power of desire--desire to know "the" answers, desire to understand why we're here and where we're going, and glib, handsome young men telling a rather homely teenage exactly what those answers are. Too bad they are utterly false and based upon a darkly ingenious fraud.
Sadly, for time immemorial, dishonest men and women have convinced intelligent, earnest followers that they, and they alone, represent God or the Devil and everything in between. Apparently, that desire for knowledge--initially blamed on a woman, of course--opens the mind to the easy manipulations of those who would capture our passions and steal our ability to think for ourselves. Of course, adoration, money, and material goods then follow, which is what it was all about to begin with ....
After posting an anti-Romney/Mormon screed when he first got the nomination by default, I took it off. My interest is not in exposing all the admittedly weird rituals and beliefs; ex-Mormon sites proliferate on the Web and others who have more experience in the temple than I have already revealed pretty much all the bizarre stuff, or at least enough of it that we can get the picture pretty well.
Yet I took that blog entry down. I'm not a person who likes to hurt anyone or enjoys attacking persons for their beliefs. I firmly believe in freedom of religion in the United States as well as the separation of church and state, but when honest, spiritual persons tell me why they feel as they do about certain things I'm usually empathetic. (I know, Republicans believe empathy is pathetic and weak, but I'd like to posit that it is the quality Jesus asked us to exercise at all times.) Thus I did not feel comfortable going public with my views and took down that blog entry.
But then Debate One happened. For the sake of brevity I'll just mention a few observations in light of media coverage of the event: Our President looked very tired, as might be expected of a man who is running a country whose embassy had been recently attacked overseas, among other major concerns both domestically and internationally; and 2) Mitt Romney was boorish, ignoring the moderator and going far over his permitted time in a debate format that has been honored, with perhaps small exceptions, in every previous Presidential debate until now. Mitt Romney is not used to hearing "no," and the hell with the rules, but that's not surprising in the least to me. He shilled for his brand-new positions like a used car salesman desperate to sell the car with the broken engine block before his customer notices that core defect.
Since that debate, I've witnessed Republicans' embracing a candidate they hadn't been too sure of until the moment he appeared to come out swinging, a brash he-man to President Obama's more dignified, statesmanlike and yes, apparently fading as the night went on, demeanor. Of course, Mitt, who laughed so jollily when he called himself, one of the richest men in this nation, "unemployed," had nothing but weeks of daily preparation from his team of experts--experts in mass hypnosis, no doubt, who also train LDS missionaries and other church leaders--"Just say what they want to hear, and the hell with the facts. Come out tough and confident and spew lies through your teeth and the sheep out there will love you because you look much more like their version of what a President of this nation should look like--more like a Thomas Jefferson than a Frederick Douglass, as was meant to be."
Worked like a charm. Like a peeping stone telling the future, by damn.
(N.B. I separate LDS leadership from LDS membership--I've known and still know many fine human beings who are members, but they are forbidden to look at sources such as this and have no idea about the church's unsavory beginnings. I'm trying to also revise my term for the rank and file Republicans out there; I know so many of them here in Appalachia, and they are good, well meaning folks who, in many cases, are very intelligent. However, they don't take the time to investigate their party's views, the mis-information so many sources on the Right now know they'll blindly accept, or compare their pundits' comments on any given topic when they relate to a Democrat versus Republican.
I am sympathetic to the plight of these good folks because I've been hoodwinked myself; I know the power of propaganda to subvert my best human qualities to a belief system that reveals its ugliness as slowly as it can until changing one's view affects every aspect of their lives, particularly relationships within their own families. I know, from debating with my friends who are Romney/Ryan supporters, that they are not any more mean or selfish than I am--but only I seem to be able to see the chasm between their beliefs and the views they've swallowed from Fox et al. and the conclusions they make.
My attempt here, I suppose, is to acknowledge the power of Groupthink--something I hope to explore in more depth in this and my other blogs.)
My goal here is not to personally produce evidence--though, as a librarian and genealogist, I will be searching every nook and cranny for anything that might possibly be relevant. However, my plan for this blog is to look back at my lifelong fascination with religion and philosophy. For I feel haunted by Solomon, not only to publicize his rightful authorship of a fantastic tale upon which thieves based a cult of never-before-seen proportions--but also to put together what I've learned thus far about teleological matters and perhaps even rechristen myself a Christian, not one who believes what the Bible tells us of his death and resurrection as literal truth, but as a person who follows Jesus's teachings that I learned so well in Sunday School, thanks to Mrs. Kremelmeier's felt board. I know that, if Christians truly follow Christ's Sermon on the Mount and his other lessons, we would not be arguing today about whether or not to provide social services to the least among us.
As I look back on my life, religion and philosophy have captured my passions as long as I can remember--though most of the time I've been what some call agnostic. I've never, even when professing that I believed the LDS to be true "beyond a shadow of a doubt," fully decided whether or not God or something less anthrocentric exists out there. My personal beliefs lean so far to the left, and always have, that I can't explain how I accepted the LDS racist and homophobic policies of the 1970's when I joined (and before and beyond), or much of anything else about it, but that is the power of desire--desire to know "the" answers, desire to understand why we're here and where we're going, and glib, handsome young men telling a rather homely teenage exactly what those answers are. Too bad they are utterly false and based upon a darkly ingenious fraud.
Sadly, for time immemorial, dishonest men and women have convinced intelligent, earnest followers that they, and they alone, represent God or the Devil and everything in between. Apparently, that desire for knowledge--initially blamed on a woman, of course--opens the mind to the easy manipulations of those who would capture our passions and steal our ability to think for ourselves. Of course, adoration, money, and material goods then follow, which is what it was all about to begin with ....
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